Yes R-121’s and R-122’s are great on drums. The R-121 is highly recommended for kick, toms, room mics, high-hat and ride cymbals. It’s good for snare as well, but care must be taken to place it where it won’t be hit. For kick use, angle the mic at approximately 45 degrees. Depending on placement, a
Traditional ribbon microphones will be damaged if you position them too close to an extremely loud guitar cabinet, but the R-121 was designed to take high SPL’s and can handle reasonably close miking duties on a loud cabinet. Ribbons have a strong proximity effect, so placing a ribbon mic any closer than 4 inches from
The R-122 is basically a phantom powered version of the R-121, coupled with a larger transformer and active electronics. This gives the R-122 13 db more level without any increase in noise (all of the extra level comes from the larger transformer; hence that wonderful thing called “free gain”). The extra level is useful when